To the parents of the three boys who were loudly yammering right into the back of my head, who kept getting hushed by me and everyone around me, at the 3:15pm showing of Harry Potter in Cinema 1, at the Silver City Riverport in Richmond, BC:

We know you both were sitting close by and you are SO lucky everyone didn't beat the living shit out of you in the theatre for not making your sons SHUT THE FUCK UP during movies. It may be fine for them to do this at home, but it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make sure they don't do that in the theatres.

Either buy a fucking clue or don't spawn. Thank you.

Cordially,

The Bride of the First House.

Advice to everyone who hasn't seen it yet (yeah, all three of you under that rock in the thickest part of the forest): go on a Monday matinée or some other Children Unfriendly time.

I thought CoS was really choppy. They cut things out everywhere and it was still almost 3 hours long. I think it might be worth their while to make two 1¾-2 hour movies out of each book and get in some details like why Hermione just gave Ron an awkward handshake at the end instead of giving him big a hug.

The time Harry spent at the Weasley's house wasn't developed enough.

Gilderoy Lockhart was portrayed as an idiot, but wasn't nearly as developed as he was supposed to be. The blue pixies were just one incident in a long string of blunders in that class.

Harry's reputation as the rumoured Heir of Slytherin and the contempt for him within the school, especially in the Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses, wasn't nearly as well brought out. There were so many things that Harry was supposed to do that makes everyone suspicious of him. Not just revealing that he was a Parselmouth.

Snape barely got any Potter Vendetta time in... and Snape's Potter Vendetta is IMPORTANT. Or at least it feels like it's important to me. Part of it is the foreshadowing and implications of Snape's relationship with Lily and James Potter that was hinted at in Prisoner of Azkaban. Part of it is my speculation about what will be revealed in Order of the Pheonix. But I believe there's a reason Snape treats Harry, Ron and Hermione the way he does and it was not shown much in the CoS movie.

Tom Riddle had a lot more background in the book. I don't know how significant it will be to the rest of the series, but I think it's noteworthy that Voldemort himself is a half-blood - half Muggle, half Wizard. And his Wizard half comes from his mother's side; his middle name "Marvolo" is in honour of his maternal grandfather.

I don't think "Marvolo" was his mother's maiden name. I think it was his maternal grandfather's first name. If Tom is the Heir of Salazar Slytherin, then it would make sense that the surname on his mother's side was "Slytherin". But then, an heir can be the son or daughter of a son or daughter in British culture. It's not like Chinese where an heir can only be the son of a son. If there are no sons, then there is no heir.

You're kidding me, right? THAT'S the Sword of Gryffindor?!?!?!?! It's a freaking DAGGER. And somehow, I had the impression that it was gold.

Another thing... I've always thought Basilisks were lizard-like creatures with four legs as opposed to a snake/serpents with no legs. Magic: The Gathering anyone? Remember the semi-nasty Lure/Basilisk combo in the Green deck? The drawing of the Basilisk was a four legged lizard thing. Basilisks, in real life (such as the one I saw in the Tropical section at the Vancouver Aquarium), are four legged lizard creatures as well. Do an Image Google for "basilisk" and the real life photos that come up are four legged lizards. I was wondering about that when I was reading the book too.

It just felt like everyone was sprinting around trying to speed-blurt all their lines before the camera cut away from them to the next scene. The whole movie was like a trailer for the book. If they keep up the one movie per book thing, Goblet of Fire is going to really suck. And that would be most unfortunate given the magnitude of the events the fourth book.

I really don't like that CoS focussed so much on The Trio. The Hogwarts' Faculty, the other students and everyone else just faded into the background.

Ginny Weasley is so cute =)

It's interesting that they pronounce "Lucius", LOO-see-us. In Gladiator, the boy was LOO-shus, so I've been reading it as LOO-shus in my mind. Jason Isaacs was okay in the part. I really thought John Malkovic would have been better though... much better suited to the part and, quality-wise, more on par with the rest of the cast.

Comments

Yes. The original title was The Philosopher's Stone. Rumour has it they changed it to The Sorceror's Stone for the US because they didn't expect the US audience to know the legend of the philosopher's stone in mediaeval alchemy. (And they shot each scene of the film mentioning it twice, once for US release and once for UK.) At least, that's what I heard, so it must be true =)

Was it called The Philosopher's Stone outside of the U.S.? I've been curious about that, since my paperback is title The Sorcerer's Stone.

I think the Philosopher's Stone is the title outside of the US. I don't know why it's called The Sorcerer's Stone in North America.

I love the word "Philosopher" much better because it is refering to Nicholas Flamel. Although Flamel was a Wizard in Harry Potter (and thus, "The Sorcerer" might fit), he was an Alchemist in Victor Hugo's original novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". So I tend to think that it's more appropriate to call him "The Philosopher". It implies less fantastical magic powers and makes him more of an ancient, earthly quasi-scientist, which I think Alchemists and Philosophers are.